Nov. 17th Chapel Hill Town Council Meeting

Updated drawings that will be presented at the Chapel Hill Town Council meeting Nov. 17, 2008 are now posted here. We will receive concept plan review from the town council.

"The concept plan is a preliminary step toward the preparation of a formal development plan" (from the Chapel Hill Development Ordinance p. 90). This is the beginning of the review process and not the end.

These new drawings depict a four-story hotel with both structured parking and open parking. They are preliminary. We will receive comments from the town council on Monday. We expect to modify this design in response to the council's comments. We also expect to modify the design as we receive suggestions from the Southern Village parking lot committee.

Welcome and Introduction

Welcome to the space where you can find out about the proposal for the Southern Village Center. As updates become available, they will be posted here.

Key elements of our proposal
• Architecturally distinctive hotel with approximately 100 rooms.
• Structured parking underneath the building to serve Market Street stores and the hotel.
• 5,000 square feet of street front retail.
• A “green” building that qualifies for LEED certification for new construction, adhering to high standards of energy conservation.
• Exploration of closing one block of Aberdeen Street, creating a public plaza and perhaps a water feature. This would connect the new building with the existing stage and green area.

Why consider a new Village Center building? There are two reasons: design and economics.

Design
The design goal is to complete the Village Center with an attractive building. The key design principles that we have followed in the Village Center are:
• Bring buildings to the sidewalk.
• Make the street front permeable, with windows, doors and variety.
• Hide the parking.
Surface parking lots, while functional, are not attractive. A new building could achieve all of these design goals and at the same time provide adequate parking.

Parking was a topic of interest at all of the meetings we have held with Southern Village neighbors.
Those comments helped us arrive at these goals for the parking component of this project:
• Retain all the public parking.
• Through a level of structured parking, add the spaces needed to serve a hotel.
• The public parking on the Weaver Street side must be open, inviting, well-lighted and convenient to the Market Street stores.

Economics
We propose this project to support the existing businesses and restaurants on Market Street. We are the primary developer and commercial property owners in the Village Center. We own the buildings at 300, 400, 410, and 700 Market Street, as well as the Lumina Theater. These commercial buildings were completed over a six-year period, 1999-2005.

As developer-owners, we have made extensive efforts to make the Village Center successful. These include establishing the Lumina Theater to create a retail anchor, forming creative partnerships to bring in important establishments such as Weaver Street Market, Christ Church and Chapel Hill Daycare. Over the last five years, we have invested more than $100,000 to bring special events and concerts to the Village Center. We made this investment to support our local merchants and bolster the economic health of the Village Center.

This hotel proposal is another effort to strengthen the economic vitality of the Village Center. We believe a hotel would be an excellent third anchor in the Village Center, to complement our existing anchors (Weaver Street Market and The Lumina Theatre). The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Visitors Bureau reports that in 2008, a person who stays overnight in a Chapel Hill hotel spends an average of $286 per day for housing, food, gifts, and incidentals. We believe a hotel would bring significant business to our retail stores and restaurants, and strengthen the long-term economic vitality of the Village Center.

A thriving Village Center enhances the desirability and value of the homes in Southern Village.